The second-year head coach has begun to lay the foundation for years of conference contention.
When Tim Nollan was hired as Northwestern volleyball’s seventh head coach in February of 2024, he was thrown directly into the fire.
There were just 206 days between Nollan’s hiring and his debut as head coach against UNLV, and the former Grand Canyon general had to scramble. He didn’t finalize his coaching staff until the last week of July, added his final transfer roughly three weeks before the opening match and inherited a roster with just two first years. This year’s offseason was a lot less hectic.
“At this time last year we had just finalized the roster. We spent most of May trying to find people to have enough athletes to really compete in the Big Ten,” Nollan said at Big Ten volleyball media days on Monday afternoon. “As a staff, we feel light years ahead of where we were last year. We feel like we have a roster put together to position us to have chances to win matches.”
Sienna Noordermeer, a former high school All-American who’s appeared in just 53 sets since arriving in Evanston in 2022, is expected to be a big piece of that roster. Noordermeer missed all of the 2023 season due to injury and appeared in 24 sets over 13 matches in Nollan’s debut campaign last season. But the setter has a clean bill of health, and is expected to fill the large shoes of Alexa Rousseau as the team’s lead passer.
“I’m really excited for this season…and just waiting for that first preseason match,” Noordermeer said on Monday. “I’m fully healthy, feeling really, really good, and I just am very appreciative for every opportunity to be on the court and to be able to compete and play a sport that I love.”
Competing in the Big Ten is always tough — the conference boasted seven teams in the final AVCA top 25 last season — but Nollan says Northwestern has the roster to compete in 2025, even after finishing 3-17 in conference play a year ago.
He added five players through the portal for the second straight offseason, including an all-conference caliber weapon in graduate transfer Ayah Elnady from Kansas. The outside hitter from Cairo, Egypt made two All-Big 12 First Teams in her Jayhawk career and tallied over 350 kills in each of her last two seasons in Lawrence. Nollan’s faith in her is evident — she was a Northwestern representative at the Media Days despite not being on the roster six months ago.
“Ayah is just really special. She’s an incredible volleyball player…[with] the ability to score three and a half, four points a set,” Nollan said. “I love her approach to the game because she is just relentless in her attacking for the ball.”
That relentlessness will be key for a Northwestern squad trying to claw its way into Big Ten contention. The Wildcats were picked 15th in the Big Ten Volleyball Preseason Poll, two spots ahead of where the team finished a season ago. But Elnady isn’t satisfied with a mere two-spot jump in the standings.
“For the Big Ten we’re going into every game as the underdog, obviously. We’ve seen that in the preseason poll. This is where the fun is because there’s no outside pressure,” Elnday said Monday afternoon. “Within us, in the team, we know we can beat great teams and we can do something. I feel like it’s just going to be really fun playing with no pressure, but knowing that we have a lot of goals.”
For Nollan, those goals include adding players who fit the culture he’s trying to build. He added three first-year recruits in addition to the five additions through the portal, but he’s been clear that the eight newest Wildcats aren’t coming into a program that’s a blank slate. Nollan used his first winter in Evanston to ensure that Northwestern’s culture was ready for the talent infusion.
“I feel like we did a lot of work in the winter and spring quarters with the returners to build a really strong foundation so those eight newbies just slot in. They understand that this is how we prepare for practice; this is how we will conduct ourselves on road trips; this is how we succeed in the classroom,” Nollan said. “These eight players want to be here. They understand what Northwestern is.”
So what exactly is Northwestern?
It’s becoming a Tim Nollan program — 5:45 a.m. practices, athleticism and versatility at every spot on the floor and players who are just as successful off the court as they are on it. In other words, it’s a program with a winning mentality. And its players are ready to showcase that mentality on the court.
“We’ve talked a lot about embracing the challenge…we are going to have to play our hardest every single night,” Noordermeer said. “That’s so exciting for us because it just pushes you day in and day out…we have a lot of talent and we have a lot that we can do this year.”